Frontier

New Novel from the Winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award

Introduction by Porochista Khakpour.

"One of the most raved-about works of translated fiction this year"—Jonathan Sturgeon, Flavorwire

Frontier opens with the story of Liujin, a young woman heading out on her own to create her own life in Pebble Town, a somewhat surreal place at the base of Snow Mountain where wolves roam the streets and certain enlightened individuals can see and enter a paradisiacal garden.

Exploring life in this city (or in the frontier) through the viewpoint of a dozen different characters, some simple, some profound, Can Xue's latest novel attempts to unify the grand opposites of life--barbarism and civilization, the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the sublime, beauty and death, Eastern and Western cultures.

A layered, multifaceted masterpiece from the 2015 winner of the Best Translated Book Award, Frontier exemplifies John Darnielle's statement that Can Xue's books read "as if dreams had invaded the physical world."

Can Xue is a pseudonym meaning "dirty snow, leftover snow." She learned English on her own and has written books on Borges, Shakespeare, and Dante. Her publications in English include The Embroidered Shoes, Five Spice Street, Vertical Motion, and The Last Lover, which won the 2015 Best Translated Book Award for Fiction.

Karen Gernant is a professor emerita of Chinese history at Southern Oregon University. She translates in collaboration with Chen Zeping.

Chen Zeping is a professor of Chinese linguistics at Fujian Teachers' University, and has collaborated with Karen Gernant on more than ten translations.

Porochista Khakpour is the author of two novels, Sons and Other Flammable Objects and The Last Illusion.

The Frontier

The Frontier

This early work by Maurice Leblanc was originally published in 1911 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. “The Frontier” is a classic war story and is that old idea of the conflict between the old and the new, between fathers and sons, and between the intense convictions of yesterday and tomorrow. Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc was born on 11th November 1864 in Rouen, Normandy, France. He was a novelist and writer of short stories, known primarily as the creator of the fictional gentleman thief and detective, Arsène Lupin. From the start, Leblanc wrote both short crime stories and longer novels – and his lengthier tomes, heavily influenced by writers such as Flaubert and Maupassant, were critically admired, but met with little commercial success. Leblanc was largely considered little more than a writer of short stories for various French periodicals when the first Arsène Lupin story appeared. It was published as a series of stories in the magazine 'Je Sais Trout', starting on 15th July, 1905. Clearly created at editorial request under the influence of, and in reaction to, the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, the roguish and glamorous Lupin was a surprise success and Leblanc's fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories. On this success, he later moved to a beautiful country-side retreat in Étreat (in the Haute-Normandie region in north-western France), which today is a museum dedicated to the Arsène Lupin books. He died in Perpignan (the capital of the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France) on 6th November 1941, at the age of seventy-six.

Frontier

The first in a trailblazing trilogy of the brave men and women who risked their lives to build a future in the untamed heart of the American frontier…

Fort Kearney, Nebraska, is the gateway to the west for a new breed of pioneers. Civil War veterans and widows, card sharps and Indian agents, and drifters—they arrive every day hoping to forge their destiny. Colonel Henry B. Carrington of the U.S. Calvary is assigned the unenviable task of securing a trio of forts in the dangerous Dakota Territory. At his command is a rising young officer Mark Reynolds and his spirited bride Rose, who longs for danger and excitement. Her wish comes true when army scout Jack Gregory learns that three native tribes are preparing to defend their land against Carrington’s troops. As the drums of war intensify, Gregory takes off on a deadly mission of his own, Rose risks temptation in the arms of an army surgeon, and Carrington faces the greatest foe he has ever known…

Now, at a lonely outpost in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, they must make one final stand. The fate of a nation—and the history of America—will be written in blood.